The Petrified Flesh Read online

  For Lionel, who found the door to this story and who so often knew more about it than I did, friend and finder of ideas, indispensable on either side of the mirror.

  And for Oliver, who again and again tailored English clothes for this story so that the Englishman and the German could tell it together.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1. Once Upon a Time

  2. Twelve Years Later

  3. Goyl

  4. Clara

  5. Schwanstein

  6. Truth or Lie

  7. The House of the Witch

  8. Under the Witch’s Roof

  9. The Tailor

  10. Fur and Skin

  11. Hentzau

  12. His Own Kind

  13. The Use of Daughters

  14. The Castle of Thorns and Roses

  15. Soft Flesh

  16. Not Ever

  17. A Guide to the Fairies

  18. Whispering Stone

  19. Valiant

  20. Too Much

  21. His Brother’s Keeper

  22. Dreams

  23. Trapped

  24. The Hunters

  25. The Bait

  26. The Red Fairy

  27. So Far Away

  28. Just a Rose

  29. Through the Heart

  30. A Shroud of Red Wings

  31. What if…

  32. The River

  33. So Tired

  34. Larks’ Water

  35. Underground

  36. The Wrong Name

  37. At the Dark Fairy’s Windows

  38. Found and Lost

  39. Awoken

  40. The Strength of Dwarfs

  41. Wings

  42. What now?

  43. Dog and Wolf

  44. Too Late

  45. Past Times

  46. The Dark Sister

  47. The Chambers of Miracles

  48. Wedding Plans

  49. One of Them

  50. Beauty and the Beast

  51. Hostages

  52. Happily Ever After

  Author’s Note

  About the Publisher

  The Reckless Series

  Copyright

  1

  ONCE UPON A TIME

  The night was breathing in the apartment like a dark animal. The ticking of a clock, the groan of a floorboard when Jacob slipped out of his room… everything drowned in its silence. But Jacob loved the night. It was like a black cloak woven from freedom and danger, its darkness filling the rooms with the whisper of forgotten stories, of people who had lived in them long before he and his brother were born. The Kingdom… that’s what Will had named the apartment they called home, probably inspired by the yellowed pages of their grandfather’s fairy-tale books filled with German words and images of castles and peasant houses that looked so different from the skyscrapers and apartment blocks outside. It had been easy to convince Will that the apartment was enchanted because it had seven rooms and was on the seventh floor. Two years ago Jacob had even made him believe that the whole building had been built by a Giant who lived in the basement. He could make Will believe anything.

  Outside the stars were paled by the glaring lights of the city, and inside the large apartment was stale with their mother’s sorrow. For Jacob sadness smelled like his mother’s perfume, which defined the vast rooms as much as the faded photographs in the hallway and the old-fashioned furniture and wallpaper.

  As usual she did not wake when Jacob stole into her room. They had fought once again, and for a moment he yearned to caress her sleeping face. Sometimes he dreamed of finding something that would wipe all that sadness off her face—an enchanted handkerchief or a glove that enabled his fingers to paint a smile onto her lips. It wasn’t just Will who had spent too many afternoons listening to their grandfather’s tales.

  Jacob opened the drawer of his mother’s nightstand. The key lay under the pills that let her sleep. You again? It seemed to mock him when he took it out. Foolish boy. Do you nourish the hope that one day I’ll unlock more than an empty room for you?

  Maybe. At the age of twelve one could still imagine such miracles.

  There was still a light burning in Will’s room—his brother was afraid of the dark. Will was afraid of many things in contrast to his older brother. Jacob made sure he was fast asleep before he unlocked the door of their father’s study. His mother hadn’t opened it since his disappearance more than a year ago, but Jacob couldn’t count the times he had sneaked into the empty room to search for the answers she didn’t want to give.

  The room was untouched as if John Reckless had last sat in his desk chair less than an hour ago. The sweater he had worn so often still hung over the chair, and a used tea-bag was desiccating on a plate next to his calendar, which still showed the last year.

  Come back! Jacob wrote with his finger on the fogged-up window, on the dusty desk, and on the glass panels of the cabinet that held the antique pistols his father had collected. But the room remained silent—and empty. He was twelve and no longer had a father.

  Vanished.

  As if he had never existed. As if he had been nothing but one of the childish stories Jacob and Will made up. Jacob kicked at the drawers he had searched in vain for so many nights, drowning in the helpless rage he felt each time he saw his father’s empty chair in front of the desk. Gone. He yanked the books and magazines from their dusty shelves and tore down the model airplanes hanging above the desk, ashamed at how proudly he had painted them with red and white varnish.

  Come back! He wanted to scream it through the streets that cut their gleaming paths through the city blocks seven stories below, scream it at the thousand windows that punched squares of light into the night. But instead he just stood between the shelves listening to his own heartbeat, so loud in the silent room.

  The sheet of paper slipped out of a book on airplane propulsion. Jacob only picked it up because he thought he recognized his father’s handwriting, though he quickly realized his error. Symbols and equations, a sketch of a peacock, a sun, two moons. None of it made any sense. Except for the one sentence he spotted on the reverse side:

  The mirror will open only for he who cannot see himself.

  The mirror. Jacob turned around—and met his own reflection. He and his father had found it in one of the building’s huge basement rooms, shrouded in a dusty sheet, amongst old-fashioned furniture and suitcases filled with the forgotten belongings of his mother’s family. Once the whole building had belonged to them. One of his mother’s ancestors had built it, “manifesting a sinister imagination when designing it” his father would have added. The sculpted faces above the main entrance still frightened Will, staring at every visitor with gold-encrusted eyes.

  Jacob moved closer to the mirror. It had been too heavy for the elevator. He could still see the scratches that the frame had left on the walls when three men had carried it up to the seventh floor, swearing and cursing all the way. Jacob had always believed the mirror to be older than anything he had ever seen, despite his father’s explanation that mirrors of that size could only be produced after the fifteenth century.

  Its glass was as dark as if the night had leaked into it and so wavy one could barely recognize one’s own reflection. Jacob touched the thorny rose stems winding across the silver frame, so real the blossoms seemed ready to wilt at any moment. In contrast to the rest of the room the mirror seemed never to gather dust. It hung between the shelves like a shimmering eye, a glassy abyss that cast back a warped reflection of everything John Reckless had left behind: his desk, the antique pistols, his books—and his elder son.

  The mirror opens only for he who cannot see himself.

  What was the
meaning of that?

  Jacob closed his eyes. He turned back to the mirror, and felt behind the frame for some kind of lock or latch.

  Nothing.

  Only his reflection looking him straight in the eye.

  It took quite a while before he understood. His hand was barely large enough to cover the distorted reflection of his face. But the cool glass clung to his fingers as if it had been waiting for them, and suddenly the room the mirror showed him was no longer his father’s study.

  Jacob turned around.

  Moonlight fell through a narrow, glassless window onto walls built from gray stone roughly cut. The room they enclosed was round and much bigger than his father’s study. The dirty floorboards were covered with acorn shells, and the gnawed bones of birds, and cobwebs hung like veils from the rafters of a pointed roof.

  Where was he?

  The moonlight painted patterns on Jacob’s skin when he walked toward the window. The bloody feathers of a bird stuck to its ledge, and far below he saw scorched walls and black hills with a few lost lights glimmering in the distance. Gone was the sea of houses, the bright streets—everything he knew was gone. And high among the stars were two moons, the smaller one as red as a rusty coin.

  Jacob looked back at the mirror, the only thing that hadn’t changed. And saw the fear on his face. But fear was an emotion Jacob almost enjoyed. It lured him to dark places, through forbidden doors, and far away from himself. Even the yearning for his father could be drowned in it.

  There was no door in the gray walls, just a trapdoor in the floor. When Jacob opened it, he saw what was left of a burned staircase melting into the darkness below, and for a moment he thought he spotted a tiny figure climbing up the soot-covered remains. But before he could lean through the opening to have a closer look, a rasping sound made him wheel around.

  Cobwebs fell down on him as something jumped onto his shoulder. Its hoarse growl sounded like an animal’s, but the contorted face, flashing its teeth at his throat, looked as pale and wrinkled as an old man’s. The creature—a Stilt as he later learned—was much smaller than Jacob and as spindly as an insect, but terribly strong. Its clothes seemed to be made of cobwebs, its gray hair hung down to its hips, and when Jacob grabbed its thin neck, it sank its yellow teeth deep into his hand. Screaming, he pushed the attacker off his shoulder and stumbled toward the mirror. The spidery creature came after him, licking his blood from its lips, but before it could reach Jacob, he pressed his unharmed hand on the mirror’s glass.

  Both the scrawny figure and the tower room disappeared, and behind him Jacob once again saw his father’s desk.

  “Jacob?”

  Will’s voice barely registered over the beating of his heart. Jacob gasped for air and backed away from the mirror.

  “Jake? Are you in there?”

  He pulled his sleeve over his mauled hand and opened the door.

  Will’s eyes were wide with fear. He’d had another bad dream. Little brother. Will followed him like a puppy, and Jacob protected him in the schoolyard and in the park. Sometimes he even managed to forgive Will that their mother loved him more.

  “Mom says we shouldn’t go in there.”

  “Since when do I do what Mom says? If you tell on me, I won’t take you to the park tomorrow.”

  Jacob thought he could feel the glass of the mirror like ice on his neck. Will peered past him but quickly lowered his head as Jacob pulled the door shut behind them. Will. Careful where Jacob was rash, tender where he was short-tempered, and calm where he was restless. Jacob took his hand. Will noticed the blood on his fingers and gave him a quizzical look, but Jacob just quietly pulled him back toward his room. What he had found behind the mirror was his.

  His alone.

  For twelve years that would be the truth. Until the day Jacob would wish he had warned his brother that night of the mirror and of what its dark glass might hold for him. But the night passed and he kept his secret.

  Once upon a time… that’s how it always begins.

  2

  TWELVE YEARS LATER

  The sun already stood low over the walls of the burned ruin, but Will was still asleep, exhausted from the pain and the fear of what would was growing in his flesh. One mistake. After twelve years of caution.

  Jacob covered his brother with his cloak and looked up at the sky. The two moons were already visible and the setting sun blackened the surrounding hills. He had made this world his home. Twelve years were a long time. By fourteen he already couldn’t count the months he had spent behind the mirror, despite his mother’s tears, despite her helpless fear for him… “Where have you been, Jacob? Please! Tell me!” How? How could he have told her without loosing the precious freedom the mirror granted him, all the life he had found behind it, the feeling to be so much more himself behind its glass.

  “Where have you been, Jacob?” She had never found out.

  He had told Will of this world, convinced his brother would believe it all to be nothing but a fairy tale. He should have known him better. Why didn’t he realize that his stories would fill Will with the same yearning that drove him through the mirror? Be honest, Jacob, you didn’t want to think about it. No. He had longed to share what he had found with someone, and as his father’s study had kept the mirror’s secret for so many years, it had been far too easy to convince himself that it would be safe there forever.

  Maybe it would have been if he hadn’t been so eager to go back. He had forgotten only once to lock the door, and his hand was already pressed against the dark glass when Will walked in. It is so tempting to escape one’s bad conscience by changing worlds. Everything in the apartment had reminded Jacob that he had been looking for a glass shoe while his mother was dying. You have deserted her, Jacob, her empty room had whispered. Exactly like your father.

  In fairy tales the heroes are punished when they run away from a task. The heroes, not their younger brothers…

  The wounds on Will’s neck healed well, but the stone already showed in his left arm. It was jade. That was unusual. Mostly it was carnelian, jasper, moonstone…

  “He has already the scent of a Goyl.” The vixen moved out of the shadows cast by the crumbling walls. Her fur was as red as if autumn itself had dyed it. Over her hind leg it was streaked with pale scars. It had been almost five years since Jacob had freed Fox from the iron teeth of a poacher’s trap, and she had guarded his sleep ever since, warning him of dangers that his dull human senses could not detect, giving advice that was best followed.

  “What are you waiting for? Wake him and take him back. We’ve been here for hours.” The impatience in her voice was hard to miss. “That’s what we came here for, isn’t it?”

  Jacob looked at his sleeping brother. Yes, that’s why he had brought Will back to the tower: to take him back to the other world. But how was he supposed to live there growing a skin of jade? Jacob walked under the arch which held the scorched remnants of the castle’s doors. A Heinzel scampered off as Jacob’s shadow fell on him. It was barely bigger than a mouse, with red eyes above a pointy nose, and pants and shirt sewn from stolen human clothes. The ruin was swarming with them.

  “I changed my mind,” he said. “There’s nothing in the other world that can help him.”

  Jacob had tried to tell Fox years ago about the world he came from, but she didn’t want to hear about it. What she knew was enough: the place to which he disappeared far too often to bring back memories that followed him like shadows.

  “And? What do you think will happen to him here?”

  In her world, fathers killed their own sons as soon as they discovered the stone in their skin. But Jacob was sure that if there was a cure they would find it here.

  At the foot of the hill the red roofs of Schwanstein were fading into the twilight and the first lights were coming on in the houses. In his first year behind the mirror, Jacob had worked in one of the stables. From a distance, it looked like one of the pictures printed on gingerbread tins. Only the tall smokestac
ks of the factories sending gray smoke into the evening sky didn’t fit into that image. The New Magic… that’s what technology and science were called in this world. The Petrified Flesh, though, was not sown by mechanical looms or other modern achievements, but by the old magic that dwelled in its hills and valleys, its rivers, oceans, flowers, and trees; in Seven Miles Boots, Witch Needles, and countless other magical objects that Jacob had made his craft to find.

  A Gold-Raven landed on the wall under which Will was sleeping. Jacob shooed it away before it could croak one of its sinister spells in his brother’s ear.

  Will groaned in his sleep. The human skin did not yield to the jade without a fight. Jacob felt the pain as his own and for the first time ever he found himself cursing the mirror. He had only returned to the apartment for his brother, always at night so as to be sure his mother would be sleeping. Her tears had made it too hard to leave again, but Will had just wrapped his arms around him, asking what he had brought for him. The shoes of a Heinzel, the cap of a Thumbling, a button made of Elven glass, a piece of scaly Waterman skin—Will had hidden Jacob’s gifts behind his books, and then he had asked for more stories about the world where his brother found such treasure, until dawn cast its light onto the faded wallpaper and Jacob stole back to the mirror.

  He grabbed his rucksack. “I’ll be back soon. If he wakes tell him he has to wait for me. Don’t allow him to go near the tower.”

  “And where are you going?” The vixen moved into his path. “You can’t help him, Jacob.”

  “I know. But I have to try.”

  Fox followed him with her eyes when he walked over to the broken stairs leading down the hill. The only footprints on the mossy steps were his own. The ruin was thought to be cursed. In Schwanstein people told hundreds of stories about its demise, but after all these years Jacob still didn’t know who had left the mirror in the tower. Or where his father had vanished to.

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